|
The researchers suggest that people who are obese in their 40s have a high chance of getting dementia in the later stage of their life.
For more than 30 years, around 10,000 Californian volunteers had been monitored and lately it has been concluded after so many years that the fatter a person was, the more likely his chances were of catching Alzheimer's disease or any other form of dementia. The study data showed that roughly 7 out of 100 normal-weight people developed dementia. Among overweight people, the risk was almost 8 out of 100; and for obese people, it was 9 out of 100.
Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the California study was conducted by the Kaiser Permanente Medical Foundation. The project followed 10,276 people, in their early to mid-40s, for an average of 27 years. They had detailed health checkups from the mid-1960s to early 1970s.
Between the year 1994 to 2003 around 713 cases or 7% volunteers had been diagnosed of dementia according to the study of the health of the Californian volunteers. The scientists examined links between dementia and obesity. The scientists examined the links between obesity and dementia in a person using two parameters. The first was the BMI or the body mass index which could tell that how fat a person was and the second indicator that the scientists used was the skin fold under the shoulder blade and under the arms. Adjusting conditions for heart disease, diabetes etc. the scientists found the body mass indicator calculated on the basis of the ratio of a person's weight to his height, obese people were 74% more likely to develop dementia in their later life which is quite mind boggling and overweight people have the risk of 35% to have dementia in their later life. The effect was more profound for women than men. Obese women were twice as likely as women of normal weight to develop Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia, while for men the risk increased by 30 percent.
When the researchers used the thickness of the skin fold in their study it was found that both men and women had around 70% more likely chances of having Alzheimer's disease or any other kind of dementia if they had a thick fold of skin. So the thicker the skin fold the higher the chances of developing dementia.
The study could not explain that why the overweight or obese people were more likely to develop dementia but suggested of some possible theories as factors for developing dementia. One is that fat cells are known to produce harmful, inflammatory chemicals, and there is evidence that these may cross into the brain. One of the other theories was a possible lack of fatty acid found in fish which was missing from the diet of these people. Scientists are now hence studying whether fish oil supplements can prevent such people from developing dementia.
|
